Whirlpool and LG say only around 50% of their smart appliances remain internet connected after purchase, hindering efforts to sell parts and subscriptions
Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
This admission closes a loop that opened years ago. Whirlpool bet early on connected services with its integration of Amazon Dash into smart appliances, and LG followed by threatening to put Wi-Fi in every appliance it introduced in 2017 — both premised on an installed base that stays online and buys filters, parts, and subscriptions. The WSJ report now puts a number on how that bet is paying out: only about half of shipped smart appliances remain internet connected after purchase.
The timing matters because the industry response has been to double down on the ecosystem rather than the device. LG and Samsung's Home Connectivity Alliance interoperability deal assumes there is a connected base worth interconnecting — a assumption the 50% figure directly undercuts.
First-order effects
- Whirlpool and LG's recurring-revenue math breaks at the point of sale: any per-unit projection for parts, filter refills, or subscriptions built on shipped smart appliances overstates the monetizable base by roughly half.
- Product teams at both companies face pressure to justify the added cost of Wi-Fi modules when the connectivity they enable goes unused by half of buyers.
Second-order effects
- Cross-brand plays like the LG-Samsung app interoperability pact gain urgency as a retention tool — keeping the connected half engaged matters more when the other half has already lapsed.
- Rivals can pitch reliability of connection itself as a differentiator, shifting competition from feature checklists toward whether services actually stay attached to the machine.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, appliance makers will have to design for intermittent connectivity — offline-capable value, longer service lives — rather than assuming an always-on fleet, echoing the broader [[a:950028|consumer IoT critique that ordinary households won't maintain a house full of managed devices]].
- The recurring-revenue model for durables may migrate from post-purchase software attach toward things buyers opt into deliberately at purchase, since passive connectivity demonstrably decays.
The trend: Connected-appliance strategies built on assumed persistent connectivity are colliding with real-world device abandonment, forcing durables makers to reprice what a 'smart' install base is actually worth.